One of our colleagues was found shot in the head a few days ago. Abducted and executed. Our project has been going on for three and a half years, active throughout Iraq and conducting most of our work in the areas you don't want to go to. Baghdad, al Falujah, Basra, Mosul. With only four and a half weeks remaining until all of our work is ended here, our first coworker, Ali, was killed.
One dead, and under twenty days remaining. The situation in Iraq is still degrading. As it does, in twenty days, I'll be thousands of miles away, just like most of our other expat staff. For our local staff, it is a different story. For the past three and a half years, the company we work for, as well as the US and multi-national military forces, have provided overwhelming protection and security for the Iraqis who have become our roommates, beer drinking buddies, soccer teammates, and friends. In twenty days, when each of us expats leave we will be taking that protection away from our friends, leaving them alone to fend for themselves and their families. Then all we'll be able to do is hope we don't receive emails with bad news. Bad news which is sure to come.
That evening we got the news, I was in Amman, where I'll be until I leave. No more cooking. Hil and I went to Beni Hana's for sushi, and while we were the only people in the place, a thick lather of wasabi on my $8 piece of unagi made the cloud of the earlier news lift. I'm not sure where to call it other than a cloud and a fucked up situation that the American people got themselves into, but the wasabi was effective. I suppose we're all to blame now. We might be able to say that Bush started that whole damn thing, but we're the ones to blame for letting it go on, and for letting good people die who are trying to better the situation for the neighbors.
It irks me. I think I'm going to have to open the mini-bar and hit the tequila, then throw the miniature bottle down onto the pavement six floors below.
One dead, and under twenty days remaining. The situation in Iraq is still degrading. As it does, in twenty days, I'll be thousands of miles away, just like most of our other expat staff. For our local staff, it is a different story. For the past three and a half years, the company we work for, as well as the US and multi-national military forces, have provided overwhelming protection and security for the Iraqis who have become our roommates, beer drinking buddies, soccer teammates, and friends. In twenty days, when each of us expats leave we will be taking that protection away from our friends, leaving them alone to fend for themselves and their families. Then all we'll be able to do is hope we don't receive emails with bad news. Bad news which is sure to come.
That evening we got the news, I was in Amman, where I'll be until I leave. No more cooking. Hil and I went to Beni Hana's for sushi, and while we were the only people in the place, a thick lather of wasabi on my $8 piece of unagi made the cloud of the earlier news lift. I'm not sure where to call it other than a cloud and a fucked up situation that the American people got themselves into, but the wasabi was effective. I suppose we're all to blame now. We might be able to say that Bush started that whole damn thing, but we're the ones to blame for letting it go on, and for letting good people die who are trying to better the situation for the neighbors.
It irks me. I think I'm going to have to open the mini-bar and hit the tequila, then throw the miniature bottle down onto the pavement six floors below.
posted by B at 10:40 PM
2 Comments:
It's easy to be apathetic while living in America. Turn on the tube, let yourself be numbed out by what Fox television, ABC, CBS, NBC, ect. tell you. You don't have to think about it, don't have to worry that your part of problem. That WE are the ones that are occupying Iraq, still...after two years of war, war for what? To keep our oil market at a "bareable" price.
I've stopped reading the papers, stopped watching t.v., my only vice is radio and the internet, but there's always a slant to government monitered waves. It's never been see no evil, hear no evil. We are all part of this. As my friends spend their time trying to create change in Iraq, Sierra Leonne, Afghanistan, and here in America, the rest of us, go to work, to 'church', to the bars, to school, protecting ourselves from the truth of what we are actually doing.
Faith
Actually, my sentiment is leaning a little more to the side of "aw fuck it - turn it all to glass." Make it into a summertime "ice" skatting rink for the the other Arabs and the sensible Iranians. Perhaps we could sell them some nice Oaklies, designed with burkas in mind.
By trying to create change within chaos, you just get yourself in the way. How can you even start to teach in a situation such as that?
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